The instant invention relates to merging collations of documents, and more particularly to merging a collation of documents which is oriented vertically (on edge) with a collation of documents which is oriented horizontally.
Inserting equipment is utilized for collating and inserting various documents into an envelope. Typically, feeders deposit documents onto a moving conveyor belt, and the various documents are collected, aligned and inserted into an envelope. Conventionally, the feeders are situated along a single path. There are applications, however, which utilize two paths of documents in which the paths are oriented at right angles to each other, and one of the paths handles documents oriented horizontal to ground and the other path handles documents which are oriented vertically to ground, i.e., they are transported on their edge. In such a case, it becomes necessary to align the documents and to turn the vertical documents from their edge onto a horizontal plane so that the vertical documents can be merged with the horizontal documents and inserted into an envelope.
The marketplace today requires that documents be processed as rapidly as possible, and it should be apparent that the process of aligning and turning documents prior to their being merged with other documents is a time consuming process. Accordingly, the instant invention provides a method and apparatus for accurately aligning and turning vertically oriented documents and merging them with horizontally oriented documents in the minimum possible amount of time so that throughput is maximized.